Zmiana, Piskorski, and the Case for Polish Liberation

“Kremlin trolls,” “Putin’s useful idiots,” “Russian 5th column in Poland”, “threat to national security” – these are the epithets maliciously hurled at the two-year-old Polish political party Zmiana by the Polish mainstream media and government officials. “Russian spy,” “Chinese spy,” “Iraqi spy,” “agent of Putinist influence,” – these are the non-existent and baseless slanders for which Zmiana’s leader, Mateusz Piskorski, has been imprisoned in solitary confinement in Warsaw since May 2016.

Main image above: Mateusz Piskorski poses in front of a Zmiana flag

But Piskorski has been behind bars for more than nine months, and on February 7th he was sentenced to another three, despite the fact that no official charges, indictment, or evidence have been presented.Zmiana, meanwhile, has to this day still been refused registration as a political party.At the time of this article’s writing, the mass media has launched a new campaign denouncing Zmiana for being “linked to ISIS” on the grounds that one of its leaders is Syrian-born and supports the Palestinian liberation struggle.

What is Zmiana? Who is Mateusz Piskorski? Why are they so feared and repressed by the Polish regime whose ruling party is so hypocritically named Law and Justice? The answers to these two questions are long overdue for Western readers.

In Polish, zmiana means “change.” Zmiana’s first programmatic declaration after its founding in February, 2014 reads: “Change – we all want it! […] Our goal is a change of politics, not a cosmetic surgery, but a deep uprooting of the disgraced structures of the anti-social system. Change means replacing this system with a new order built for the people and by the people. Citizens must once again have control over their destiny and have the final say in public affairs.”

For Zmiana, change means regaining Poland’s sovereignty from the clutches of the US, NATO, and perfidious transnational corporations, and using Polish sovereignty to guarantee dignity, justice, and livelihood to Poles. Only on this basis, Zmiana affirms, can Poland play a peaceful and constructive role in international relations.

“But,” the uninformed but well-intentioned Western reader will ask, “didn’t Poland already regain independence and justice when communism fell?” Zmiana, like nearly half of Poles according to the most extensive surveys, would say “no” or “not exactly.”

Zmiana protests US troops in Poland. Sign reads: “No foreign troops!”

The topic of the People’s Republic of Poland is an entirely unfamiliar one in the West. Perhaps the only “milestone” of the period known to American readers is its overthrow largely contributed to by the “trade union” Solidarity. Of course, the “detail” is omitted that Solidarity was infiltrated and funded to the tune of $10 million by the CIA and itself remains one of the single most scandal-riddled entities in Polish history which subsequently betrayed Polish workers to brutal austerity, privatization, and Western corporations in the blink of an eye. Rather, the history of socialism in Poland is one of a country ruined by war and genocide rebuilt into an industrial power whose wealth was used to guarantee Polish workers socio-economic guarantees unknown to people in the West. The socialist experience in Poland displayed all the gains of 20th century socialism for nation-building and popular welfare. Against all odds, Poland not only re-emerged on the map, but made a comeback as a country in which illiteracy was rapidly eradicated and employment, housing, education, healthcare, leisure, and other socio-economic conditions written off in the West as “privileges” were guaranteed to all Polish citizens by law. In terms that are impossible to understate, within two decades of the Second World War, life expectancy for Poles skyrocketed from 46 in the 1930’s and 25 (!) during the war to 70. Not only was People’s Poland a Poland of reconstruction and attaining new socio-economic and scientific heights, but it was a defining period in which the post-war generations built from scratch a Poland here to stay whose development benefitted not a minority of capitalists, but its working people who played an active role in determining their country’s future and wealth. Despite all of the problems which later plagued Polish socialism, it was a Poland of growth and social justice unparalleled in its history.

After 1989, not only were these socio-economic rights stripped away, but the very foundations that made them viable or in the very least potentially achievable were demolished.

To let Poles speak for themselves on this matter, according to a Pew Research survey, a hefty 43% of citizens over 40 (i.e., those who lived at least two decades in the People’s Republic of Poland) say that Poles are economically worse off now, and a considerable 25% of Poles ages 18-39 say the same. Poles who say life is “about the same” account for another 25%. While this may stand out as less favorable compared to other former socialist bloc countries’ assessments of life under and after socialism, it still speaks volumes, especially in contrast to the ruling elite and the media’s daily slandering of anything and everything in Poland before 1989.

With the collapse of the Polish People’s Republic and Poland’s entry into the Washington-dictated European Union and NATO, Poland did not “regain” sovereignty, much less justice, but forfeited such to the Atlanticist project. Poland was transformed from a country of growth into a country of self-destruction. Every year, college-educated Polish youth emigrate en masse in search of a livelihood only to end up as a cheap labor source for Western corporations. Poland itself, meanwhile, has been de-industrialized, and thus deprived of the capacity to pursue independent and effective social and economic policies which in People’s Poland were guaranteed and, even if not always realized, remained the goal.

On the level of foreign policy, Poland has been encouraged to work against its own interests and security by purposefully aggravating relations with its Eastern neighbors and participating in US wars of aggression. Now, with the deployment of thousands of US-NATO troops, tanks, and missile systems on its soil and the Polish government’s relinquishment of jurisdiction over foreign armed forces on its territory, Poland is de facto under occupation. This occupation is not a mere taxation on Poland’s national budget – it is an undeniable liquidation of sovereignty and inevitably turns the country into a direct target and battlefield in the US’ provocative war on Russia. Mateusz Piskorski admits: “Comparing these two periods, whether we like it or not, it turns out that things are in favor of People’s Poland.” Zmiana’s General Secretary, Tomasz Jankowski, has cogently compared the supposedly “patriotic” Polish regime’s invitation of US-NATO occupation to Duke Konrad Mazowiecki’s invitation of the Teutonic Order to Poland in 1226, a move perpetrated under the pretext of thwarting threats from the East that ended in embroiling Poland in war with its Teutonic “protectors” for two centuries.

In a cogent appeal to uphold Polish sovereignty, Jankowski wrote: “[D]ear compatriots, it’s not the Russians who are going to occupy us now – they left here voluntarily 24 years ago. It’s not the Russians that have ravaged Polish industry since 1989. It’s not the Russians that have stifled Poles with usurious debt. Finally, it’s not the Russians that are responsible for the fact that we have become the easternmost aircraft carrier of the United States anchored in Europe. We ourselves, who failed by allowing such traitors into power, are to blame for this.”

Zmiana, therefore, rejects the current objectification of Poland and is committed to regaining Polish sovereignty and affirming a Polish raison d’etat. This manifests itself on three main fronts.

1. Multipolarity and the geopolitics of peace

Mateusz Piskorski brandishes a Polish flag at the Russian memorial to the Katyn Massacre during a Polish-Russian reconciliation initiative.

Poland as a state has disappeared from the map more than a handful of times in history, at one time for more than a century. For Zmiana, therefore, it is time to learn history’s lesson: the Polish people must base their security on friendly relations with all countries, especially their more powerful neighbors. Poland cannot afford to base its security on fulfilling the whims of a foreign power, and it cannot afford to pursue an imperial mission which pits it in a war against all. Both such traditions in Polish history have led to catastrophe and are illogical and counterproductive in the changing geopolitical and cultural arrangement of the 21st century.

In the 21st century, Poland’s bet is therefore on multipolarity and peace. This does not mean relinquishing “Polish interests,” however they might be defined (more on this below), but means realizing that Poland offers a unique place on the map and in the heritage of Europe and Eurasia, and should strive to preserve its integrity by playing the role of a constructive partner in mutually beneficial relations. In today’s conditions, according to Zmiana’s foreign policy program, this means that Poland must exit NATO and “engage in the construction of a European Security System from Vladivostok to Lisbon.” Otherwise, Zmiana says, “NATO’s geopolitics turns Poland into the foremost staging point in Eastern Europe aimed against the nuclear power that is the Russian Federation.” By exiting NATO, Poland frees itself from the “guarantee of war” offered by the alliance in North Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and by engaging in a common security project involving both Europe and the burgeoning Eurasian Union, Poland can promote mutually-assured peace from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In order to play a sovereign role in any such project, Zmiana’s program posits that Poland must develop its own military capacity. Intertwined with this is Zmiana’s demand to withdrawal Polish boots from all the places that the US and NATO have dragged them, refuse the purchases and contracts which keep Poland’s armed forces tied to the Pentagon, and ensure that Polish soil will never again be home to CIA torture facilities. Zmiana’s program clearly states the need for “an unconditional ban on the stationing of any foreign armies or military installations on the territory of the Republic.”

A Zmiana poster: “We don’t want American bases and rockets”

Contrary to the commonly held misconception, Zmiana is not unconditionally anti-European Union. Rather, Zmiana believes that the current European Union – characterized by submission to Washington, binding to NATO, neo-liberal economic policies, an interventionist Brussels bureaucracy, etc. – needs to be reformed, as do Poland’s association agreements with this union. In the words of Piskorski from a televised debate that has since disappeared from the internet, Zmiana wants “more Europe in Poland” – not a Washingtonian and Brussels Europe, but a “Europe of Fatherlands” and “Social Europe,” i.e., a “construct intended to provide benefits to all member-states, not the extension to the continent of the interests of a global hegemon from across the ocean and the dictatorship of the European Commission.” Instead, Zmiana stands for genuine European integration, for an independent, unified Europe based on sovereign countries seeking positive, productive relations with other countries and blocs, not confined to rubber-stamping enslaving agreements like the TTIP or CETA.

In Piskorski’s words: “The European Union requires deep reforms and transformation from a neo-liberal club for the rich politically subordinated to Washington into an independent, integrated bloc closely cooperating with the Eurasian Union. Beside this, the EU should return to a European social model which offers every citizen of each of the member states a defined sense of social and economic security.”

Thus, Zmiana’s program affirms: “Considering its geographical location, Poland can be a transit country, a bridge linking East and West, and this assures a favorable attitude towards the development of good, neighborly relations with major and minor entities in the region.”

Only such a Polish foreign policy outlook can work to assure Poland itself and other countries hitherto hindered opportunities and a peaceful and multipolar world order in the conditions of the 21st century. This stands in stark contrast to Poland’s current role as an agent provocateur of Washington. On this basis, Zmiana has firmly replied to all of those detracting it as “pro-Russian” with the argument that Zmiana is pro-Polish and, intimately inseparable from this, pro-peace.

2. Historical justice and rediscovering Polishness

One of the main props of the Polish elite and obstacles standing in the way of an independent Polish consciousness is rampant historical revisionism – so rampant, that in Poland it almost no longer appears to be a “revision,” but the norm. Piskorski has identified this as NATO’s long-term campaign against historical memory. This new norm of Polish historical revisionism is predicated on two main angles, (1) transferring the blame for all of Poland’s historical difficulties onto foreign actors and consequentially (2) identifying disfavored incarnations of the Polish states as “not-Poland” or even an “anti-Poland.”

This anti-historical crusade is waged by a massive network of government and non-government institutions in an attempt to rewrite history to justify Poland’s present foreign and domestic policies. The ultimate aim is presenting Russia as meta-historically, existentially antagonistic towards Polish statehood (Russophobia at its finest) and annulling any criticisms of the Polish elite as anti-Polish and therefore pro-Russian. Freedom of speech and historical debate thus, as indicated in NATO’s new doctrine on combatting “Russian hybrid war” in Eastern Europe, are to be suppressed as inherently “destabilizing.”

Zmiana has been denied a level playing in Poland’s NATO-sponsored “new democracy”.
Its offices were raided by the Internal Security Agency on May 18, 2016. The agents even confiscated Polish flags.
Click on the bar below to examine the photographic evidence.

The nurturing of mass cognitive dissonance among Poles is astonishing. While monuments to the liberation of Poland by the Soviet Red Army and Polish People’s Army are being systematically, physically dismantled, government campaigns promote the new line that the so-called “Accursed Soldiers” (armed anti-communist gangs during and after the Second World War) are the real liberators, even though there is nothing to show for this. Meanwhile, bestselling “histories” by the infamous Piotr Zychowicz promoted endlessly in bookshops and print media push the thesis that “if only Poles had sided with the Nazis,” then Poles would have “won” the Second World War. The logic here is clear: it is Russia, then incarnated in the USSR, that was/is existentially antagonistic towards Poles, while the Nazis’ designation of Poles as a subhuman race of slave laborers slated for ultimate extermination is merely a detail. What about the suicidal Warsaw Uprising of 1944 that ended in the Nazis’ near total punitive extermination of Warsaw’s population? Well, that’s Stalin’s fault, of course! What about the Polish People’s Republic? It wasn’t socialist Poland, but a “Russian occupation!” What about the tragic Smolensk airplane crash in 2010 that took the lives of much of then Polish officialdom? According to government ministers today, there can be no question that the Russians orchestrated it. What about the massive genocide against Poles at the hands of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators during the Second World War? The Russians organized it, Poland’s “defense” minister claims. No matter the fact that Ukrainian neo-Nazi leader Dmitry Yarosh, whose neo-Nazi paramilitaries were trained, armed, and funded by the Polish government, has openly said: “As for the Poles, we’ll do them a second Katyn massacre.”

The above are merely a handful of the monstrous distortions of Poland’s history that are not only repeatedly drummed into Poles through the education system and the media, but have received official government backing and funding as part of a deliberate campaign. Russophobia, extracted from particular historical conflicts between different incarnations of the Polish and Russian states, is elevated to the level of official ideology – to such an extent that it may very well soon turn out that Poland has had no history, because Russia has taken it all.

Zmiana adamantly opposes this manipulation of history or, as its program frankly calls it, “brainwashing for ad hoc political interests.”

“The first step towards the real sovereignty of the Polish people will be the moment that we stop assuming that our history is first and foremost dependent on external actors, and instead that we are responsible for our choices,” Zmiana’s General Secretary writes.

Jankowski continues: “We will be independent when we stop complaining to the Lord God about evil Russia, despicable Prussia, and treacherous Austria, and when we start seeing the reasons for the partitions in the weaknesses of the then Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Our independence will manifest itself when we stop regrettably remembering the Second Republic and Marshall [Pilsudski] ‘for wanting to do good but the commie maggots and Nazis didn’t allow him,’ and when we accept defeat in the Second World War as the result of the flawed doctrine of ‘two enemies’ adopted, as if from above, by Warsaw. Our thinking will be Polish thinking when the Warsaw Uprising will be seen as a failure not because the Red Army didn’t come to help, but because we ran at tanks with pistols. And finally: Poland will be Polish when we will want to build HER security, and not the ‘Eastern Flank of NATO’ or the ‘Western world’ with the ‘help’ of the Americans.”

Programmatically, the most important point of Zmiana in this regard is mobilizing Polish society’s intellectual capacity to openly debate history and its lessons and applications. Specifically urged in Zmiana’s program is establishing grants and public venues for young and non-establishment scholars, liquidating the infamous propagandistic Institute of National Remembrance, regulating the status of relevant NGO’s, and in their place “convening councils in which historians from our country will work to achieve a common understanding of the difficult stages in the history of relations with our neighbors.”

The fight for historical justice, or justice for history, is Zmiana’s great Gramscian battle. Without independent thinking, there can be no independent Poland.

3. Social justice as the key to sovereignty

But Polish independence, and Poland itself, is impossible without the prosperity of the Polish people. Zmiana, therefore, – let’s call things by their names – is anti-capitalist. Zmiana not only wields its own affiliated trade union, the Zmiana Workers Unity Free Trade Union, which has done more to win gains for Polish workers in the last two years than the mythologized unions that sold out People’s Poland’s wealth over to a handful of oligarchs, but Zmiana also boasts a concrete and ambitious socio-economic program.

Zmiana’s trade union leader speaks on International Workers Day, 2016

Poles must not be the subjects of big foreign capital, Zmiana urges, and the systematic liquidation of the industrial base that the generations of socialist Poland built from scratch on the ruins of the Second World War is depriving Poland of any future and Poles of dignity and livelihood. The post-socialist GDP growth lauded by the media and the regime’s audits, in Zmiana’s opinion, has not gone to benefit Polish workers or towards a sustainable economy. Piskorski explained in an interview: “More than 5,000 enterprises employing more than 1,000 people each were built out of the rubble of war between 1945 and 1989. After 1989, most of them were liquidated and in their place appeared only 500 new ones which violated workers’ rights and were owned by foreign capital.”

Zmiana’s program contains dozens of concrete, immediate policy proposals aimed at improving the livelihood of the majority of working Poles. But the most qualitative intended to empower the Polish working class and guarantee Poland a sustainable, just economy boil down to the following: (1) introducing the category of inalienable collective property into the constitution, (2) establishing a People’s Property Fund to coordinate the nationalizing and putting of strategic economic sectors on a planned basis, (3) withdrawing from the perfidious IMF and World Bank, (4) establishing development plans in coordination with representative workers’ unions, and (5) establishing a Reindustrialization Fund and a state-guaranteed Employment Fund. With these proposals, Zmiana strives to return Poland’s wealth to its people and unhinge the country’s political-economy from the whims of its anti-national, anti-social, and anti-Polish elite whose billions were made by expropriating the economy of former People’s Poland. Only by orienting Poland’s economy on a sustainable and just foundation can other spheres of the country’s life, such as education, healthcare, and environmental protection, be revived. Zmiana’s program stands out from other political parties’ “who are we and what do want” platforms by providing concrete budget estimates for the first five years of a potential Zmiana-led government. This, in Piskorski’s words, is a sine qua non for proving Zmiana’s accountability to Poles and a bold statement that “we are ready to exercise governance in Poland already today” beyond mere populist rhetoric. According to Zmiana’s program, this is a firm rebuff to the “constitutional fraud claiming the ‘realization of the principles of social justice’ and a ‘social market economy’” at the hands of which nearly 40 millions Poles have suffered since 1989.

Zmiana: Work, Peace, Patriotism

In short, Zmiana’s detailed socio-economic program is a testament to its affirmation that only a Poland of, by, and for Poles can resolve the infinitely posed “Polish question.” In a Zmiana Poland, there will be room for parasitic elites and the dictates of foreign capital.

The Piskorski Case as a symptom

It is no coincidence that Zmiana has been targeted with outright political repression for this revolutionary vision for Poland and Poles and the protests it has led. As Piskorski proudly declared: “We will not complain, because it is obvious that the establishment reacts to us as a virus which could potentially lead to illness and death. We were aware of this from the very beginning…We will certainly not let them forget about us.”

Piskorski is a case and point of this. Two days after he publicly warned that US-NATO troops now have a mandate to suppress Polish dissent on the grounds of combatting “Russian hybrid war,” he was snatched up by armed agents of Poland’s Internal Security Agency while taking his children to school on May 18th, 2016. He was promptly imprisoned in Warsaw, where he remains with no formal charges to this day.

Mateusz Piskorski is a veteran symbol of resistance to Poland’s colonization. A doctor of political science, professor of international relations, and geopolitician who co-founded the European Center for Geopolitical Analysis, Piskorski first rose to prominence as the up and coming youthful parliamentarian of Poland’s Self-Defense Party. Often described as a “populist” party, Self-Defense became the “protest party”, the only major Polish political force opposed to Poland’s NATO membership and adamantly defending Poland’s ruined farmers and defenseless workers. Piskorski rose to become an advisor to the party’s famous anti-establishment leader and his own mentor, Andrzej Lepper. Frighteningly and symptomatically enough, this icon of opposition to Poland’s post-1989 course was found dead in 2011. The official version calls the incident a suicide, but inconvenient theories and unsettling coincidences abound alleging that Lepper’s death was far from his own initiative. In his prison cell today, Piskorski is supposedly writing a book on this scarring incident that claimed the life of one of Poland’s leading critical politicians.

Piskorski’s activism and intellect have made him an icon in more than just Poland. Across the post-Soviet space, he is revered as one of the few sober Polish political voices, and his expertise has been welcomed at nearly a dozen election monitoring missions and countless academic conferences.

Piskorski launched discussions on founding Zmiana in 2014 when, returning from monitoring the referendum on Crimea’s secession from Ukraine and joining the Russian Federation, he was urgently convinced of the need for a new anti-establishment party capable of preventing a Ukrainian disaster scenario from gripping Poland. Piskorski recalls: “I had dozens of meetings and lectures in various regions of the country. We held discussions with very different people and everyone insisted that expert and journalistic activities should come around to politics. In this sense, Zmiana is an entirely grassroots movement.”

However, Piskorski has no intent of claiming the part for himself. “It is not my personal project,” Piskorski told Fort Russ several months before his imprisonment, “but a response to the specific needs of Polish society. I became the party’s face only because of the recognition and controversy which I aroused many years ago as a parliamentarian.” Instead, he says, Zmiana has a greater purpose: “The place of the party on the political scene is currently the role of the anti-system opposition, not only criticizing the current reality (as protest movements do), but also proposing a completely new system in the economic sphere, social policy, ownership structures and international relations.”

For consistently leading Zmiana’s protest movement and personally striving for rapprochement between Poland and its eastern neighbors, Piskorski is now 21st century Poland’s first political prisoner. From prison, he has written compelling letters warning against Poland’s relegation to a WWIII battlefield and urging Poland’s anti-establishment forces of both right and left to unite to save Poland from impending catastrophe.

It is no coincidence that this article is being written in English for Western audiences. As Piskorski told the author in November 2015, Poland’s colonization has led to Western voices of protest being treated with infinitely greater respect and influence. While an open letter to the Polish president signed by European Parliament deputies and demanding Piskorski’s release was shamelessly ignored by both the government and the media, there is still the chance that international attention and pressure can compel Poland’s authorities to resign from their desperate attempts to keep one of Poland’s most concerned citizens, critical scholars, and influential opposition politicians behind bars.

Indeed, as dramatic geopolitical shifts and political revolts continue to grip Europe and the United States, there is the possibility that Poland’s ruling elites will have the rug ripped out from under their feet. For the time being, a man is in jail on no charges and his party is barred from democratic processes. This political repression in itself is a testament to the burning need and importance of (C)hange.

JAFE ARNOLD, Assistant Editor & Correspondent, Eastern EuropeJafe Arnold (J. Arnoldski) is an American expat studying European history and culture at the University of Wroclaw, Poland. Formerly an activist on the American left, he is currently a research fellow and Polish liaison for the Center for Syncretic Studies, a translator and editor at Fort Russ, and the founding editor-in-chief of Eurasianist Internet Archive. Besides translating unique analyses from Russian and Polish for English-language audiences, Arnold’s interests and expertise include geopolitical processes and ideological developments in Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet space.

The Essential Saker II: Civilizational Choices and Geopolitics / The Russian challenge to the hegemony of the AngloZionist Empire

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55 Comments

“The Polish government’s éminence grise, Jarosław Kaczyński, has picked up the German establishment’s call to acquire its own nuclear weapons. He would welcome it, if the EU would become a “nuclear superpower,” Kaczyński told a leading German daily.”http://german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/59005

Of course are CIA/Nazi thugs insane; Hitlery, Merkel, Yats & Yarosh, Jack the Ripper, Macierewicz (the one you mention for sure because his own brother was murdered by Nazi/CIA/NATO terrorists in the Smolensk crash). What’s the diiference between Nazi tyrannized Europe (WWII) and NATO/EU? There is no difference, especially obvious in countries like Poland, the Baltics, but Germany, France now as well.
The lunatics are running the asylum. No wonder that instead of these evil psychopaths, nonviolent freedom as Mateusz Piskorski – we don’t even have them in Germany, he is an icon of resistance to Nazi/NATO/EU tyranny – was thrown in prison by hooded Nazi thugs.

All these Nazi/Jewish Bolshevik thugs do, like their fellow psychopaths (JM$M) at Trump’s press conference, is blame Russia. Russia has nothing whatsoever to do with Trump or tyranny in Poland. However their own Nazi high priestess Hitlery sold 20% of US uranium to Russia. And the Poles were only a few times (partly) run by Russians/Soviets when they lost, after they themselves aligned or collaborated with Nazis (Roth-child agents Napoleon, Hitler, and Hitler’s idol Pilsudski WWI-WWII) and attacked Russia first.

Laika, I am puzzled by your venomous hatred of the Bolsheviks. We can argue till kingdom come about their role in history, broadly speaking, but one thing they certainly were not is pro-Nazi. It was after all the Soviet Union which broke the back of the fascist horde, and at a heroic cost of 27 million casualties, ensured the victory of the “allies.” (As you know, these “allies”, led by the AngloZionists, immediately turned around upon the war’s end to launch the Cold War to suffocate Russia, while they frantically imported as many Nazis and Nazi scientists as they could, while their OSS/CIA was busy seeding Europe with anti-Russian/anti-communist sleeper provocateur cells, Operation Gladio.)

On the other hand, you’re quite right about the pathological hatred of the CIA/Zionist dominated media for Russia in the US and the West in general; the US Neocons are almost 90% Jewish. That they were able to infiltrate themselves that high into the most sensitive spheres of US state power reflects the utter corruption of the US political system, as the prostituted politicians have for generations feared the power of these media, and the power of rich US Jewish lobbies to fund or not fund their corrupt campaigns. US politicians, by the way, are cheap prostitutes. It doesn’t take a fortune to buy their ear. It’s all very disgusting and disheartening. That said, it is also a fact that it is US Jews the single most vocal segment of the US population in opposition to war and the rebirth of McCarthy tactics currently spearheaded by the Democrats.

Obviously, the experience of WW2 contributed greatly, along with propaganda, and the creation of Israel and its own shift rightward, to the shift in that direction by many formerly pro-Soviet and pro-Russia American Jews. Yea, it’s a very confusing situation, but the forces at play are rather clear. In any case, US-led imperialism is the main enemy of humanity and must be defeated.

Well, Roth-child’s Jews organized the 1917 revolution to destroy the Russian Empire, Russian Orthodox Christianity, and so forth. They didn’t succeed (entirely). Then the same thugs organized the Hitler Project to defeat Stalin’s Russia, to establish Israel via the orchestrated (partly false flag, partly hoax) persecution of Jews, anti-Semitism & the ‘holocaust’. The Hitler Project was entirely organized by Roth-child Jews (e.g. MI6/CIA), but entirely to be blamed on Germans & others, and to be used to blackmail them, and to be a pretext to forbid ‘anti-Semitism’. I don’t think it is confusing at all. These monstrous thugs gradually got control of the whole system.

Laika,
I might agree with what you wrote at the beginning, under one condition: please, don’t mention Polish history. So much ignorance might be understandable, if you were writing about some wild tribe living in jungle in Borneo. But Poland? And you live in Germany? We are your neighbors, did you ever notice?

OK, the lunatics are running the asylum. But why did they burn all history books?

“the Poles were only a few times (partly) run by Russians/Soviets when they lost, after they themselves aligned or collaborated with Nazis (Roth-child agents Napoleon, Hitler, and Hitler’s idol Pilsudski WWI-WWII) and attacked Russia first”.

Was Napoleon Nazi? The French would be surprised.
I don’t know if Piłsudski was Hitler’s idol, but he most certainly had nothing to do neither with WWI nor with WWII. The first war he spent in a German jail and 1931 he died.

Poland was in 1795 partitioned between Prussia, Austria and Russia and disappeared from the map of Europe for 120 years. A rather big part of Poland was then governed by the Russians. However, many Poles then could study and even make career in Russia.

And when did Poles “attack Russia first”, please? Are there really no Geschichtsbuecher in Germany left? And when – this is really a hideous slander – did Poles “align or collaborate with the Nazis?” Don’t you really know, how many Poles lost their lives during this war? It is the second, forgotten, never mentioned Holocaust.

“And when – this is really a hideous slander – did Poles ‘align or collaborate with the Nazis?’ “

It’s not a piece of “hideous slander” but plain, simple truth. And it’s somewhat, ahem, amusing whenever a Pole insinuates other people need fact-check their history only to prove the “liberal” attitudes he/she practices when dealing with Poland’s.

Pilsudski died in 1935, not 1931. This is quite significant as Germany turned fascist in 1933 and the Pilsudski regime signed a non-aggression treaty with self-same Germany in 1934. You should desist from “liberal” attitudes, since these more often than not are unreliable when applied to science.

Then in the fall of 1938 there was this little ‘affair’ with Czechoslovakia. Pilsudski was dead by then but, in hindsight, he was a significant part of the run-up to the conflagration the year after — most definitely having to take part of the blame for it.

Sorry, you’re fully entitled to your opinions, but not to your own facts.

Exactly, and the Poles even managed (opportunistically) to steal a bit of northern Czechoslovakia, after Hitler, French, and Brits dismantled it in Munich. Great Slavs, those Poles… once you get to know them and their insane history (e.g., Poland assiduously worked against any defense treaty between Stalin’s USSR and France/UK in the 1930s) – you’d agree that (removed because of ethnic insults. Watch the language if you intend to get your posts accepted MOD.)

It’s true that annexation of Zaolzie was very unwise move, especially in 1938. However to say “steal” is too harsh and narrow opinion without knowing the whole story of this region, and difficulties of this period. I recommend you to read ( section 1918-19 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaolzie). It’s not complete, but it gives some light. You sound like a provocateur in this forum – it’s not a way to go forward, whoever you are.

Poland had a right to these lands, however it was executed badly, the plebiscite should be called instead. And below is an extract from Norman Davis book how all this started:

In November 1918, after the withdrawal of the Austrian government, the local representatives of the Polish and the Czech Republic come to a friendly agreement establishing a demarcation line that divided the principality according to ethnic criteria. Unfortunately, this agreement was unacceptable to both Governments in Prague and Warsaw. Czechoslovaks put forward a claim to the lands of the principality for economic reasons and on 25 January 1919 Czech Government gave his troops the order of forced occupation of all industrial areas.

First I’ll say I agree with you. I think Poland should have gotten the area by right of ethnicity. But in fact by law that area wasn’t part of the partitioned Poland of old .But had been a part of the Bohemian Crown Lands (Czech). Since at least the Middle Ages. It had no legal ties to Poland. So I see why Poland was never able to mount a legal case for the territory.Poland had a better claim (only barely) to Silesian lands at that time.But while during the early Middle Ages it had been a part of a Polish State. It hadn’t been a part of a Polish state since then.And almost all of Lower and Middle Silesia,and almost a half of upper Silesia had been Germanized since the late Middle Ages.So much so that even many of the ethnic Poles of the area voted to remain in Germany.

Uncle Bob 1, Bureaucrats in Prague and Warsaw, should stick to the will of local Czechs and Poles when they were both happy and cooperative. Davies states in his book that after establishing a demarcation line, Germans led by French Count de Manneville brought only chaos, so much that It became the subject of attacks and insults from both Czechs and Poles together against Germans. And then slowly things progressed worse and worse until even Czechs and Poles set themselves on edge.
In respect to Duchy of Bohemia, remember that Polish king Bolesław I the Brave was half Pole and half Bohemian ( mother was Bohemian princess Dobrawa ), so we can understand his claim to these lands. Intermarriages and monarchies brought only wars in Middle Ages.

I reckon it’s safe to say that the French Revolution was almost identical to the Russian Revolution, and in order to tyrannize, enslave, destroy France, Europe, and Russia, (the world) on behalf of the Zionist banksters & their ethnic mafia.
Well, there were an awful lot of Poles in the Grande Armée of the Jewish mercenary/thug Napoleon, he even called the attack on Russia the Second “Polish” War. The occupation of nowadays Poland, at the time entirely run by Prussia & Austria, was the first “Polish” war. Just like Dubya ‘liberated’ Iraq no doubt.

Well, what a surprise that’d be (not).The Semite Yiddish (German dialect) speaking (Ashke-) Nazis migrated to the Polish-Lithuanian banana republic (which included Ukraine, Belarus) when they were chased out of Western Europe in the High Middle Ages due to their barbaric practices.

They have a significant influence in the EU because they pander to the US and too an extent under the previous govt with Tusk, to Germany. Their Russophobia is extreme like kievs
It will be interesting to see how this changes going forward with all the European elections plus changes in the US

It should be emphasized that most Polish citizens DO NOT support the government’s attempts to restore the status of political detainees, at least in reference to Piotr Rybak, Mateusz Piskorski and Brunon Kwiecień. These mistaken measures are extremely unpopular, and this in fact can override all apparently “favourable” elements of Polish governmental policy, because Polish people NEVER FORGIVE ANY attempt to subjubate or intimidate them. NEVER EVER.
Therefore, “political” imprisonments of Brunon Kwiecień, Piotr Rybak and Mateusz Piskorski, can be used, with adequate dose of whistleblowing, to actually reverse the political trends in Poland and seriously undermine any support for US-rael that is yet present.

“Programmatically, the most important point of Zmiana in this regard is mobilizing Polish society’s intellectual capacity to openly debate history and its lessons and applications.”

Needless to say, I do like and sincerely respect Piskorski. Zmiana stands out as the exception to the rule that Polish society’s “intellectual capacity” is proof positive of the basest Polish jokes, as the following passage aptly makes clear:

“What about the massive genocide against Poles at the hands of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators during the Second World War? The Russians organized it, Poland’s ‘defense’ minister claims. No matter the fact that Ukrainian neo-Nazi leader Dmitry Yarosh, whose neo-Nazi paramilitaries were trained, armed, and funded by the Polish government, has openly said: ‘As for the Poles, we’ll do them a second Katyn massacre’.”

“it’s not the Russians who are going to occupy us now – they left here voluntarily 24 years ago. It’s not the Russians that have ravaged Polish industry since 1989. It’s not the Russians that have stifled Poles with usurious debt. Finally, it’s not the Russians that are responsible for the fact that we have become the easternmost aircraft carrier of the United States anchored in Europe. We ourselves, who failed by allowing such traitors into power, are to blame for this.”

An excellent summary. The conclusion that should be drawn is fairly obvious: With Russia and her people wiped off the planet, the Poles wouldn’t change their attitudes the slightest. Russophobia would still be their default pastime while other neighbouring peoples would have to put up with their “settling of accounts”.

Humour time:

An Irishman, a Brit, and a Polak are having dinner with their wives. The Irishman looks at his wife and says “Pass the honey, honey!” and she does so. The Brit looks at his wife and says “Pass the sugar, sugar?” and she complies. The Polak looks at his wife and says “Pass the pork, pig”

Donald Tusk, who is now President of the European Council, whose grandfather, Josef Tusk, served in Hitler’s Wehrmacht, has consistently demanded that the Kiev regime imposed by the US and EU deal with the Donbass people brutally, “as with terrorists”.

While the Polish special services were training the future participants of the Maidan operations and the ethnic cleansing of the Donbass, the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs made this official statement (02-02-2014): “We support the hard line taken by the Right Sector… The radical actions of the Right Sector and other militant groups of demonstrators and the use of force by protesters are justified… The Right Sector has taken full responsibility for all the acts of violence during the recent protests. This is an honest position, and we respect it. The politicians have failed at their peacekeeping function. This means that the only acceptable option is the radical actions of the Right Sector. There is no other alternative”.

In this statement by the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs we can see that the Polish government (NATO) used violence (radical actions) as a means of ensuring the Ukrainian politicians failed in their peace keeping functions. Ukraine illustrates the role assigned by NATO to Poland. To overthrow the government of its neighbour state, Donald Tusk resorted to neo Nazi activists in the same way that NATO in Turkey uses Al-Qaeda (Al Nusra Front) to overthrow the Syrian government.

Poland was set up as a buffer between Germany and Russia. My guess is if the Polish people will not submit to their Anglo-American masters, then Poland will be broken into several several countries similar to Yugoslavia. Smaller countries would indeed be much easier for the Empire to manipulate. The Silesian Autonomy Movement already exists, but there are others in Poland. They ask for autonomy (for now):

It‘s great everybody here is a great expert on Poland (and on nazi polenwitze: „The Poles are swines!“ – „Ha ha! Exactly! You nailed it, Nussimen!“).

You, with your nick as if you were a Pole (seen from Germany) yourself, have learned or discovered that „Poland was set up as a buffer between Germany and Russia….“ Great! The land of Germany („Deutsches Reich”) was founded in 1871, and „Russia“ came into existence with the coronation of Ivan IV as czar of all of Russia in 1547. And THEN someone „set up“ Poland as a buffer between the two – – in 966 AD! Which proves that the Poles are insane and everybody else is in his right mind, right? Before 1871, from 800 to 1806, we had the „Holy Roman Empire“ here, of which Poland was one part among others, but nothing remotely resembling „Germany“.

Some days ago an expert on this site (I could not find it again) informed us that Poland „was partitioned thrice, and disappeared thrice from the map…“ Until now historians in Poland and outside thought, that Poland‘s enemies (three Germs: Kaiserin Katherina von Anhalt-Zerbst, König Friedrich II von Hohenzollern and KaiserJozef II von Habsburg) had cut pieces off from Poland thrice, so that in the end – once – there wasn‘t anything left. But the author of this article, Jafe Arnold, also an expert on all these things, even tops the former one: „Poland as a state has disappeared from the map more than a handful of times in history, at one time for more than a century“ – that is, at least 7 times Poland disappeared while other historians would agree at the max to two (2) times, from 1791-1918, and from 1939-1945, while on the other hand, during Poland‘s first and major „disappearance“ something like Poland did exist – the Duchy of Warsaw (1807-1815) and the „Kingdom of Poland“ (1815-1915) with the Russian Czar as Polish King and autonomy until the uprisings of 1831 and 1863 – but the Poles did not acknowledge them as being „their‘s“. For making their point clear they insisted, their country had been taken from them, while in fact since 966 it never un_existed, but often was not Polish enough for the (majority of) Poles.

I insist on this, because this is what Poland has today again, and everybody else, too: we all live in „our“ countries, yes, only they are no more ours. At the face of this as presented here, we are the good ones, because we all want to have a better situation for us, thile we agree that the Poles are insane because their politicians are as wicked as ours, while the Poles themselves, are, well, who cares, let‘s say: „insane“.

As to breaking up Poland „as Yugoslavia“ misses the history of Yugoslavia and the deep segregations imposed on the Southern Slavs for centuries. For the germ and baltic herrenmenschens, all the Poles were always only swines (we just heard it again), thus equals. The fake „autonomy“ of the Silesians is of course another germ Henlein-type/Maidan-type stunt, and your „The Silesian Autonomy Movement already exists, but there are others in Poland“ is void, since „RAS“ is again only Silesia. As long as „Merkel“ pays them well,
they will exist.

Poland as one country was split apart in the Middle Ages. Then parts of it were joined back together again to form a new Kingdom of Poland (minus some of the Western areas. That didn’t rejoin Poland until the 20th Century). During the 18th Century Poland was once again partitioned,on three separate occasions .With the Russians taking only some of the old “Rus” areas of that current state. That the Poles and Lithuanians (who Poland in the 15-16 Centuries had united with) had first taken from Rus. The Prussians and Austrians took mostly ethnic Polish or mixed territory. Which in Austria’s case also included some old Rus territory as well.Napoleon set up another Polish state out of some of the Austrian and Prussian Polish lands.After his fall that “Duchy of Warsaw” as it was called. Was ceded to Russia. And then renamed the “Kingdom of Poland”. After a Polish revolt there. That “Kingdom” was abolished totally. And no part of the “Polish” lands had an independent state until Poland was recreated as a state at WWI.With Poland’s defeat in WW2,Poland once again ceased to exist as a state. Until it was reborn with the German defeat.So I guess it would depend on how you “classed” the times Poland disappeared. Certainly there was the one in the Middle Ages. There was the one in the 18th Century (the last one of the 3 in that Century,erased the name of Poland totally from the map).The abolition of the Duchy of Warsaw,and then the abolition of the Russian created Kingdom of Poland.That once again erased the name of Poland from maps.And lastly the 1939 end of Poland.I would count 5 in all. But if you count the 2 other 18 Century partitions that took much land, but left an area called Poland.Then that would be 7 in all.

Nice little history/geography lesson there which helps me to understand why my great – grandfather von Wishnowsky left the area concealed in a horse- drawn cart – load of hay that was crossing one of the “borders” , and made his way , via Germany , to New Zealand.

I believe that the Holy Roman Empire was also the Second Reich.
The Third Reich (Western Europe funded by Israel and the USA) and Fourth Reich (The Anglo-Zionist Empire today) are the end of the line.
A Fifth Reich there shall not be.

To Anonymous … I find your opening statements somewhat snide to a well respected commentator here … please be aware we are here to discuss ideas and events and not impune other commentators … re-read moderation rule #2. …… mod-hs

Hi Uncle Bob,

it‘s so nice that you corrected my Short History of Poland, however I would have preferred if you informed yourself before writing. You seem to want to say that Poland cannot have existed „ever since 966 (in one form or another, except 1939-45)“ since, according to you „Poland as one country was split apart in the Middle Ages“. That is when? According to wiki_en „the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century“ – how informatiove from you to tell us that Poland, founded in 966, „was split apart“ some sunny day between AD 476 (fall of the West Roman empire) and 1492 (Columbus/America). You continue: „Then parts of it were joined back together again to form a new Kingdom of Poland …” When, then, was „then“? Not necessarily before the end of the Middle Ages, because your next date after 476 is „the 18th century“. If Poland „was split apart“ in 477 (some day in the Middle Ages), „parts of it“ could have „joined back together“in 478 already. Or did the Passive Voice you use for Poland as a matter of course wait until 479? 1479? 1679? Knowledge is just a few mouseclicks away… try it, it‘s fun.

What happened with Poland after 966 was not that it „was split apart“ but that for a while there was not 1 king of 1 kingdom of Poland, but several parallel partial Polish states, since Boleslaw III had divided his realm under his three sons in 1138, and the one kingdom was restored by Wladyslaw I in 1320. When one looks at the mess with rival partial states over centuries in England, France and in the landscape that would become „Germany“ much later, not to speak of the finno-balto-tartaric-slavic mess East of Poland, where „Russia“ surfaced only much later, Poland is an example of orderliness. Yes, under the rule of „nobles” everywhere in Europe the borders and names of countries could easily change according to changes in the families of the noble rulers, following hereditary principles. Still, while regional princes fought each other bitterly, France continued to be understood to be France, England was England, even the territorial amoeba where they spoke German was often referred to as „Deutschland“ „deutsche Lande“ etc., and the partial principalities in Poland were together still Poland… yes with Silesia and Pomerania drifting away, while other territories were won. A while the Czech king was also Polish king, then Hungary and Poland had together one king, later Poland granted itself the institution of an elected king who by definition was always an Auslander , but still as king of Poland.

One big historical problem for Poland – to have the germ enemy within their country – was not acquired, as Jafe Arnold writes quoting Tomasz Jankowski, „under the pretext of thwarting threats from the East“, although this would fit the presented story well, but because of a problem in the NORTH: the baltic nation of the „Prusses“ (in the Kaliningrad region) were the only Balts that fought for their freedom as fiercely as is typical for Poles, which angered Konrad Mazowiecki who wanted to simply overrun and annect them. This had nothing to do with Russia or Russians and „early Polish hysteria against them“. But it is a case of early Polish idiocy in relations with the West: their admiration of the West leads them for centuries into the same self made trap of expecting all knightly virtues from them and instead being pushed around by their heroes again and again and again.

The Polish-Lithuanian Union was called „The Common Cause“ or „Commonwealth“, existed from 1358-1795, was multi-national and multi-cultural, and was one of the biggest if not the biggest country in Europe apart from Russia (which did not exist at the beginning of that period). Lithuania brought her territory into this union, which was East of Poland and West of what began to become Russia. Your suggesting that the Poles stole territory from non existing Russia and had just to give it back in the first partition is, uh….. The whole Ukrainian problem is rooted in the existence over centuries of a big empire in that region which is completely unknown to most discussing these issues: the elephant that left the room. „During the 18th century“ (only in its last quarter) „Poland was once again partitioned“ (no, it had not been partitioned before, meaning “cut up by somebody else“) „on three separate occasions“. Really? Yes and no, since these partitions (the first on the instigation of Frederick II. of Prussia) took place in one logical sequence, together visibly the premeditated murder by a gang of equals (German princes in this case) of an unwanted competitor just like „The Empire“ (which we Sakerites oppose) wants to kill off Russia at least since WWI in so many „separate“ wars as will be necessary. Such mafia murders never target the criminals, but those who are too good for this world. In reality mighty Poland-Lithuania protected young Russia from the German slavocides, otherwise it would have never grown up . After „brotherly“ dividing Poland between Germans, Austrians and Russians the logical next step for the Germs was to attack and „partition“ Russia – planned by the Alldeutsche in 1891, and nearly achieved by our datafetishist underhumans exactly 25 years later, in 1916. F*ck! Next try at the 50th jubilee of the Alldeutsche, 1941… F*ck!! Enter Reinhard Gehlen and Angela Hitler to prepare and try the next repetition of the Final Solution for Russia…

So, yes, from 1795-1804, 9 years, there was nothing Polish on the map. Then came Napoleon and did to them, to Prussia, Austria and Russia, what they had done to Poland, as God‘s punishment. He „set up another Polish state out of some of the Austrian and Prussian Polish lands… “Duchy of Warsaw” as it was called“ Ok, he set up the the kernel of a renewed Poland, whose official name was „Duchy of Warsaw“, no matter how somebody else called it. It was not composed of Prussian or Austrian territories, but of Polish territory; it was quite big for „Greater Warszawa“, and grew when Austria was defeated. Then Napoleon was defeated, and the Congress of Vienna defined Europe anew. Its new gestalt for Poland („Congress Poland“) was that of a constitutional kingdom with a liberal constitution and again changed borders – so it was not „ceded“ and „then renamed” (why should Russia give partially away again what had been „ceded” before?) but reshaped. The Russian czars as Polish kings did not give a damn for the Polish rights, and the Poles answered with not „a“ but two uprisings or „revolts“, in 1831 (deposing of the czar as king of Poland) and 1863, which were punished by the loss of autonomy in 1831 and after 1863 with again the loss of a place on the map (thus another 54 years for 1864-1918, but opinions differ about how official the loss of the name „Kingdom of Poland“ was). After, not „at“ WWI, Poland and its place on the map were recreated, then taken again by our butchers from 1939-1945. Thus, all in all Poland wasn‘t on the map on three occasions for (9+54+6 =) 69 years. Counting 2 cases of continued if reduced existence and 1 case of changing the legal shape in 1 logical second (of nil temporal extension) as noteworthy non-existence may be accepted as the expression of a serious death wish for that country: „It should not exist at all, because it practically never existed in the past.“ With that wish you are not alone, certain famous people agree with you.

For goodness sake. Must I provide every tiny piece of information for you to get the point:

“Fragmentation”

After Bolesław III divided Poland among his sons in his Testament of 1138,[8] internal fragmentation eroded the Piast monarchical structures in the 12th and 13th centuries. In 1180, Casimir II, who sought papal confirmation of his status as a senior duke, granted immunities and additional privileges to the Polish Church at the Congress of Łęczyca.[8] Around 1220, Wincenty Kadłubek wrote his Chronica seu originale regum et principum Poloniae, another major source for early Polish history.[8] In 1226, one of the regional Piast dukes, Konrad I of Masovia, invited the Teutonic Knights to help him fight the Baltic Prussian pagans.[8] Konrad’s move caused centuries of warfare between Poland and the Teutonic Knights, and later between Poland and the German Prussian state. The first Mongol invasion of Poland began in 1240; it culminated in the defeat of Polish and allied Christian forces and the death of the Silesian Piast Duke Henry II at the Battle of Legnica in 1241.[8] In 1242, Wrocław became the first Polish municipality to be incorporated,[8] as the period of fragmentation brought economic development and growth of towns. In 1264, Bolesław the Pious granted Jewish liberties in the Statute of Kalisz.[8][13]

Late Piast monarchy under Władysław I and Casimir III[edit]

Attempts to reunite the Polish lands gained momentum in the 13th century, and in 1295, Duke Przemysł II of Greater Poland managed to become the first ruler since Bolesław II to be crowned king of Poland.[8] He ruled over a limited territory and was soon killed. In 1300–05 the Czech ruler Václav II also reigned as king of Poland.[8] The Piast Kingdom was effectively restored under Władysław I the Elbow-high (r. 1306–33), who was crowned king in 1320.[8] In 1308, the Teutonic Knights seized Gdańsk and the surrounding region (Pomerelia).[8]

King Casimir III the Great (r. 1333–70),[8] Władysław’s son and the last of the Piast rulers, strengthened and expanded the restored Kingdom of Poland, but the western provinces of Silesia (formally ceded by Casimir in 1339) and most of Pomerania were lost to the Polish state for centuries to come. Progress was made in the recovery of the central province of Mazovia, however, and in 1340, the conquest of Red Ruthenia began,[8] marking Poland’s expansion to the east. The Congress of Kraków, a vast convocation of central, eastern, and northern European rulers probably assembled to plan an anti-Turkish crusade, took place in 1364, the same year that the future Jagiellonian University, one of the oldest European universities, was founded.[8][14] On 9 October 1334, he confirmed the privileges granted to Jews in 1264 by Bolesław the Pious and allowed them to settle in Poland in great numbers.

As is plainly seen Poland splintered apart (as I said). Then parts of it joined back together (as I said). But without its Western parts (as I said). I don’t intend to continue to provide you with detailed information when I post an overview of a centuries long topic. You are free if you prefer to ignore my posts in the future. Obviously they are not good enough for you.

It can’t be empathized enough about how bad the social,economic,and political societies in Eastern Europe were before WW2. All those countries today gloss over those facts. Its not “convenient” to remember that awful period. And then to have to see the changes made during the Socialist period.But lets reflect a little on that time.Not with long drawn out examples. But instead with simple statistics.

As can be seen just by these figures (assuming the national governments reporting didn’t inflate them a bit),Italy was the worst off of the major Western nations.A result of the historic poverty and underdevelopment of Southern Italy. But even with that, Italy’s per-capita income was much higher than anywhere in Eastern Europe. Hungary’s figures were the best in Eastern Europe. Which reflected the development created during the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And that Budapest, an industrial city towered over pre-WW2 Hungary.Those countries didn’t have to suffer any sanctions by Western states iduring that time (unlike the USSR of that same period and after). We see that the German and British per-capita incomes were over “3” times,even the highest of Eastern European countries.While even the lower French per-capita income was around “21/2” times the highest Eastern European income.

But as in all capitalist societies (actually all societies),per-capita income can only be one tool to look at. Since it doesn’t differentiate between the millionaire in a palace,and a homeless beggar.But it combines all income together to gain the average for per-capita. Along with the poverty of that period we should understand that the war damage and loss of population was enormous shortly following on 1938.So that societies that had in many cases just recovered from the destruction and upheaval caused by WWI, and its bloody aftermath. Were plunged into a war several times more destructive that what they suffered from in WWI.

Since the author wrote about Poland, lets cover that country a bit more.Everything he wrote about is true.But here are a few facts left out. Poland’s population at the start of WW2 is estimated at 36 million. In 1950,11 years later, the population was recorded as 25 million.The losses during the war were probably the highest by percentage of any nation in Europe.And just as in the Western areas of the USSR,the war destruction was staggering. All of that damage had to be rebuilt. Displaced people cared for.And a new society constructed. All the while Poland was being subjected to a “Cold War” by the West. And with almost no outside aid.Just as in the USSR it was a phenomenal achievement to rebuild and restructure that nation in that period.But ,as the author points out,they did it.

Using Poland again as our marker. Lets look at the 1980 statistics of per-capita income compared to the US of that time.
Poland’s GDP ppp percapita income was $4752. Being 53.7% of the US GDP ppp per-capita of that same year. Despite the Western sanctions of the Cold War. Lets remember that in 1938,without any Western sanctions meant to cripple Poland’s economy.They were only around 20% of the US per-capita income.

Lets look at one more example,Russia. We have the figures here of 1992 when Russia emerged out of the USSR. In that year their GDP ppp per-capita income was $11,482 (with the Cold War just ending the anti-Soviet sanctions). Which was 62.9% of the GDP ppp per-capita income in the US .After the horrors of the Yeltsin years,and with today’s Western attacks on her economy. The Russian GDP ppp per-capita is $26,109. Which is 61.4% of the GDP ppp per-capita in the US. So while close. Russia has still not surpassed the gains she made in income during the Soviet period.

Thank you, Uncle Bob, for not joining in the brainless and filthy hate propaganda against Poland and Poles which is rampant on this site. I fully agree with you that what Poland achieved during the post-WWII period is amazing, just as is the wealth of culture Poland produced during its whole existence.

Nobody here has been capable to see by himself – but you will surely after the following hint – that „THE“ Poles that are always quoted for proving how idiotic THE Poles are, are usually government officials (types like the MI6/CIA vermin Radoslaw Sikorski, writing statements of the PL foreign office) or politicians of THE two parties (as in USA or Germany: only two are really allowed), and these are exactly as totally corrupt whores of the Western overlords as everyhwre else. So, when an angloami slave in Poland says the same as an angloami slave in Germany, namely, that without Anglomerica thw world would end , why is that blamed on the people they have occupied and terrorize? No Western nation so far has found a remedy against this pest – Trump allegedly tries it at this moment – and the whole of Eastern Europe has been „western“ized in this respect.

My own experience with Poles in Poland is not that they are idiots or ridiculous or driven by blind anti-Russian frenzy, but that as persons there are much more attentive, then pensive, then also outspoken than 100,00% of the dumb scum I happen to belong to, the Germs – but that they exactly as vee Germs and exactly everybody else in the „Free“ West have not yet found a method to gain back control of our own lives and fates, including politics and sensible political statements about their, the Poles‘ own opinions. But when „Merkel“ spews out her nonsense about Russia, TheSaker & Co remark that „THE Germs are sceptical of her and heartily wish to have good relations with Uncle Putin“ – while when Polish politicians do as „Merkel“ does, then they hurl unanimously: „THE Poles blindly hate Russia….“

I do read the Polish press from time to time (detected one of Saker‘s articles in Opcja a while ago – „Opcja“ is one of the „thick magazines“ typical for Poland, and much of this number (and earlier ones) could easily be published at TheSaker‘s as valuable reading and thinking stuff – dismissing everything with „oh these bloody Poles“ is, of course, much easier.)

However, Uncle Bob, I am myself a nil on economy, thus have no understanding or respect for things like „GDP“. Isn‘t that the amount of money everybody gets – leaving completely out what in one country he might possess as a matter of course (say a house with land around it), while in another country nobody has this kind of wealth and would be totally unable to finance its acquisition. This would be a general difference between rural/”backward“ and city/industrialized societies.

Right, not to mention the income inequality there still is in Russia as a result of the take-over by (Nazi) thugs & thieves in the 90s (Putin’s Russia achieved a lot, but also in many ways not yet). Poland was far less the victim of communism (expropriation, collectivization), but the horrible take-over of the 90s (exactly the same goes for east Germany) still unabatedly goes on there.

1) Poland is a Vatican’s project: it stands as a catholic iron fist between orthodox and protestant nations. The purpose of Polish nation is: to die for the belief.

2) A lot of high social standards in Middle-European communist countries were paid by Russian cheap oil and raw materials and rather expencive products of these countries, sold to Russians. Russians only wanted them to stay in Warsaw Pact, and gave them more than they had for themselves.

I cannot know this for certain, but I strongly suspect that the Polish government represents the voice and will of its people about as much as the Spanish government represents the voice and will of the Spanish people, or Canada’s bought and paid for political corrupt clowns represent my voice and will.

There is a lot of good in what Piskorski says but, the scourge of socialism puts his plan on the road to failure. You can’t make a country prosperous by stealing from one citizen and giving it to another. That process guarantees the failure of this agenda as socialism is communism by another name. It’s the forced reallocation of resources by the government. It hasn’t worked in the past and won’t work now for these Poles. Piskorski understands much but misses on that point.

Well, to view things in a more Marxist light, taking the ‘surplus’ in value of an object, which was created largely by the labor put into its production, and giving that surplus to upper mgt, is stealing. That’s why there used to be labor unions, that’s why there are anti-child labor laws, and that’s why ‘right to work’ can be considered ‘right to exploit’.

From where did the capital for all those Polish factories come? The ones that were sold for scrap. What was the return on investment? High employment, which produced government revenues through the usual process. Nobody is saying there should be no return on investment, that is, how the surplus is divided. Some schemes work better than others. We don’t have alot of capital investment in the US because Glass-Steagall was revoked, which means that capital needs have to compete with speculation as to returns. So to achieve the the same returns as speculation, capital invested has to garner an increasing amount of the surplus. Additionally, futures contracts, as I (limitedly) understand things, and derivatives and such, can be multiplied 30:1. When you buy bricks and mortar, you have bricks and mortar. You can’t leverage that.

“You can’t make a country prosperous by stealing from one citizen and giving it to another.”
Sure you can, if you are stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Masses of countries have been made prosperous by redistribution. It built US postwar prosperity, Northern European and Scandinavian social democratic prosperity and so on. The record is clear–not that any of this constitutes socialism.
And more recently, masses of countries have been made less prosperous by redistributing from the poor to the rich. Overall, the more unequal a society, the less prosperous it tends to be. One could make an argument that values of individual liberty, competition and whatnot mean that this shouldn’t be done even if it will make things better, but claiming that it doesn’t work is just wrong.

It’s not just Zmiana, there are many more organizations, for example xportal support Novorussia and even Syria (http://xportal.pl/). There’s as well a “sect” (Free Poland) that hates Zionists ( http://wolna-polska.pl/ )
I am not Pole, I am Belarusian, but can read a bit of polish.

As a Polish-American (or, perhaps, American Pole), who have benefited immensely from socialist Poland’s free higher educational system, I would like to open by arguing that a better short analysis of Poland’s current political problems could not be written in English for the American and western European audience. Bravo!

I would like to return to this article and point out yet another major problem that has contributed to the tragedy of Polish history and to the present Polish existential threat: the persistent, and now intensifying, destruction of Polish ethnic, Slavic, identity by the all-powerful Catholic Church in Poland.

Jafe Arnold should be commended for penning such an informative, well-researched article. So should the Saker for posting and promoting it on his website.

The Polish people could, of course, protest the incarceration of Mr. Piskorski. That doesn’t seem to be happening. Don’t they have one MP who could bring this up in their parliament and demand his release and freedom? Most parliament allow at least one such “social conscious” member of parliament to slip in to give the appearance of diversity of opinion.

There have also been several protests in Warsaw and other major cities, but they have been poorly attended. So, yes, in general, I agree with you: only a small portion of Polish population seems to be concerned. Most Poles have probably accepted the official “explanation” that Piskorski is a Russian spy (no evidence having been provided). And true also is your point that none of the members of the Polish PIS/PO political establishment, which is virulently russophobic, has officially intervened on Piskorski behalf, none, that is, to the best of my knowledge. I hope I am not quite accurate.

Poland now reminds me of what I’ve read of polish history during the 1930s. Probably few people are aware of this, Poland then was one of the fascist regimes that officially backed franco’s fascist take over of spain. They officially sent franco arms and were one of the 3 countries (germany and italy being the other 2) that did this on an official level.

Poland helped the fascists spread their fascism and was soundly rewarded be becoming the fascist stepping stone for a fascist invasion of Russia. Skip ahead to today and one finds the same fascist strategy, only it’s zionazi now, with fascists running poland again aligning with other fascists who are using poland as a stepping stone to attack Russia.

I don’t think anyone here understand or have the slightest idea about Poles Anti-Russian sentiments.
As much as Poland is ignorant you are as well.
Regardless of our animosities since ( you could say ) Kievan Rus, it was the Bolsheviks that defined and shaped Russophobia in public life which exists today, and as Konrad mentioned below – the all-powerful Catholic Church used it as a weapon.
No I am not russophobic these days, and there are many many more like me in Poland that wish to live in harmony with our eastern brothers, but at the same time there are some that are afraid of Kremlin ( don’t confuse with Russian ).

Please do enlighten us on why so many Poles (or is it just the elite?) hate Russia and are willing to support policies that demonize and blame Russia for all that has happened to Poland. I simply so not understand it – they are Slavs, after all, and should be aligned with another Slavic nation. Instead, they have – for centuries – done everything possible to be in conflict with Russia. And yes, let’s not forget – they waged war against Russia in 1920 (or thereabouts). Why so Poles hate Russia so much? Is it envy? (Many Poles tend to think of themselves as a great nation – while not really having achieved much on the world stage.)

Don’t expect from me enlightenment. I have no time ( nor ability in English) to write a history essay due to my poor English and complexity of topic. However I only mention a few facts.

PiS party doctrine is currently Russophobia above all, its priority is even higher than economics ( perhaps to disorient people ) PiS controls media, and their 24/7 TV and papers coverage causes russophobic sentiments look high, in fact 40% Poles don’s see Russian as a treat. there are even people that separate Kremlin from Russian people, what I mean they russophobic to Kremlin, not to Russian Nation.

By 1920 Russia was taken by Bolsheviks ( they murdered Russians, Cossacks, slavs … etc ), one of the worst kind of evil that walk on this Earth. Pilsudzki did right thing, and the proof of their expansion ideology was shown later in Finland, Estonia, Litvania … etc. In one word someone had to stop it.

Poles don’t tend to think of themselves as a great nation, but a Polish nation ( most likely due to desire to preserve the state, and never repeat history like partitions). Poles are nationalists, and it will stay that way. But it’s good. take a look at great guys in front of US Embassy ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP6YxnyrObU ). Without Nationalism this manifestation wouldn’t take place. ( the vid has Eng subs)

“done everything possible to be in conflict with Russia”

Topic is too long and cover too long period. In few words I can tell you that many Polish kings were foreigners, ignorance, Jewish presence, alcoholism, our regions had only wars ( Turks, mongols, tatars … ) and because of that economy suffered, and with it only divisions arose …. all these factors and hundreds more worked against true slavs, but if you thing that you are innocence you are mistaken, Since Bolshevik revolution you were actually more guilty than us, but hey we are in 2017 and bolsheviks are gone. Peace be with you.

Very good and informative article.
Mateusz will not stay in jail forever. His political party project was not popularised enough to get broader political attention in Poland. Zmiana would’t reach necessery 5% treshold to get into polish parliment – similarily to Korwin Mike’s party and neo-socialist Razem (Togather) party.
I think the best Zmiana’s people could do is to mingle with Kukiz 15 Movement in next elections
and togather count with 20-25% voters support. Piskorski and his people could then be responsible for foreign politics.

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